For my first ever Kara run, I have to say I think it went well. There was only one wipe all the way up to Prince, and that one was just bad luck on our part. The Raid consisted of 3 Druids, 3 Warlocks, 1 Pally, 1 Priest, 1 Hunter, and 1 Warrior. I was given the sole job of applying Curse of Weakness or Curse of Tongues, depending on the mob. Well that and causing mad DPS. From what the damage meter said the few times it went up, was that I was 3rd or 4th on DPS all night.

The Opera Event and the Chess Event were my favorite parts. Both were unique and just fun to do. Though I learned a valuable lesson, don’t talk to NPC’s unless you know what will happen. Yeah I kind of started the Opera event without everyone being ready. Yeah I was that guy. No harm though, we got the Wizard of Oz event and just wrecked it.

The end of the raid though did not go so well. We wiped 4 times on Prince, and with that we called it a night. I am not really sure what went wrong, but there was hope. We were supposed to try again on Saturday, to no avail though. Only half of the people showed up for the retry, so it was called off. The whole thing took about 4 hours and there were some long breaks in the raid to boot. I was able to get to very nice pieces of gear. The Nethershard Girdle and Boots of Foretelling, I guess it helps that I was the weakest geared player there. No biggie though, there is always next Friday and believe me, now that I have had a taste of the good stuff, (i.e., shiny purples) I plan to try to raid as much as I can.

Then I went to the Isle of Quel’Danas, mostly because not being able to go thru that portal was kind of bugging me.  I did not realize that there was not a portal back to Shattrath, I just wanted to check it out.  So I was stuck and I figured I might as well try to do a daily or two.  Usually I research any new areas I go to, but this time I just chose two at random. I kinda lucked out; I chose The Battle Must Go On and Know Your Ley Lines.  Know Your Lay Lines provided me with 10G 99S and Darnarian’s Scroll of Teleportation and The Battle Must Go On provided me with 10G 10S.

I know where I will be going for awhile, because I really want my flying mount and right now I am about 600G off.

The 10% gain experience buff, to me, screams play an alt. I have a level 21 druid that really needs my attention, but alas, no. I played him this weekend and I just could not play him for more than an hour. I even respec’d to Feral, from Resto. I was originally going to try to level straight resto, but that became very boring for me since I did not have a leveling buddy along the way like I did with Protectr.

So I will happily continue my almost obsessive quest to ding 70 and I’m sure once that goal is done I will gladly find a new one. Have you ever been focused on just one goal and let almost everything else fall to the way side?

…hmm that Neatherdrake mount looks kinda nice.

So, after getting 30 Naga claws and turning it in, I got the quest to plant the seeds at the pump stations and the Elite quests to kill the mini-boss Naga. We rode along the South end of Umbrafen Lake and I ran through about 7 mobs and stopped right at the pump controls where there were another 7 or so Naga and slaves.

I start taking a beating and healing Phrixus’ minion, but it’s an all-out battle. The next thing I see in chat is, “run” and my heals to Phrixus came up “Out of Range.” That plea/command was followed by “L2run lol,” which is my normal joke to him for stopping to fight when we get dismounted by a daze. I keep healing myself and his minion next to me, and the mobs start dropping one by one.

Phrixus is still in bad shape and says, “u just aggroed like 10 mobs, i’m not that good yet,” to which I confidently (okay, arrogantly) quipped back, “i am.” That was at 11:01. At 11:04, he bowed to me in the midst of a hug pile of bodies and said, “ok, you kick butt / i was getting owned by them.”

Here is how to survive an all-out battle:

• Devotion Aura for durability
• Keep the caster back
• Don’t aggro casters
• Blessing of Sanctuary on tank(s)
• Heal with Flash of Light
• Use potions early for cooldown
• DO NOT LOSE YOUR COOL! (it’s only a game, lol)

That is why I play a tankadin. Why do you play your class?

What has been interesting with regard to Protectr is that I went directly from abandoning Paladr (level 50 Belf protection pally) on Velen to starting a new protection pally on Silvermoon to complement Gitr for end-game raiding. I wanted a tank and a healer, but I wanted to do the dirty work as a paladin rather than a priest.

The moment I hit 59, I re-specced him to Holy in hopes of running around with a buddy and healing his mad dps/tanking and to try to get into an early Ramparts. Neither one really happened this week, so my progress was a bit slow, especially due to the adjustment of not being able to run through thickets of mobs and wear them down to get at what I want. I’m finding myself picking and choosing one on one fights and trying to do some burst damage, only to drink far too often.

Fill us in on what you have been doing with your alts. Anyone hit 60 or 70 recently?

If you want to become exalted with the Night Elves and get your own kitty mount it is going to take a lot of time and sometimes a lot of gold.

There are four repeatable quests to gain reputation with Darnassus.

1. Pristine Yeti Hide from Pratt McGrubben (30, 42) in Feathermoon Stronghold for 250+ Rep. 1 each Pristine Yeti Hide. The drop rate for it is very low. I did not have one to turn in at 64.
2. Morrowgrain to Darnassus from Mathrengyl Bearwalker (32,8) in Darnassus for 50+ rep. 10 Each Morrowgrain. At 64 I was getting 82 rep.
3. Morrowgrain to Feathermoon Stronghold from Quintis Jonespyre (32, 43) in Feathermoon Stronghold for 25+ rep. 5 Each Morrowgrain. At 64 I was getting 28 rep.
4. Additional Runecloth from Raedon Duskstriker (63, 23) in Darnassus for 75+ rep. 20 Each Runecloth. At 64 I was getting 83 rep.

All of those will take considerable time and effort to gain the necessary reputation to become exalted, and reputation gains will vary depending on race, current reputation, and level.

So I recommend that you do what I did.  I did this with a level 64 Human Warlock and still received full reputation gains.

What you do is go to the Starting area for the Night Elves, Shadowglen, and do all the quests like you were a level one toon.

The quest givers won’t show up on your map, but just talk to the Night Elves around there and in all the low level areas if you are not familiar with that area. So basically just follow the path of progression the game gives you and you will gain a tremendous amount of rep.  You will still need to do the repeatable quests, but it won’t seem as daunting as before.                  

Follow my advice and in no time you will have your very own kitty mount.

A recent vulnerability has been discovered in popular web-content delivery program Adobe Flash, and it could potentially be used to target World of Warcraft players and accounts. The newest available version of Adobe Flash, version 9.0.124.0, does not contain this vulnerability, and we recommend that everyone upgrade their Flash player as soon as possible by visiting the Adobe.com download page at the link below.

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/…

In addition, to avoid exploitation of this vulnerability, we have temporarily disabled the ability to post hyperlinks in our forums. Any links will need to be copied and pasted into a browser. We’ll continue to evaluate any potential security threats and take any steps necessary to ensure a safe and fun environment.

For more information on this issue, you can read the announcements from the Adobe security team concerning the threat at the links below.

http://blogs.adobe.com/psirt/2008/05/potential_flash_player_issue.html
http://blogs.adobe.com/psirt/2008/05/potential_flash_player_issue_u_1.html

Go upgrade and play safe.